GOOMBA RISING
by Son of Fiction
Summary: A lone Goomba must uncover a conspiracy in order to save the entire Super Mario World
1. Dark Truths on the Frontal Lobe

As a Goomba, I always had a natural psychic ability. Never thought I would end up being able to slowly crush in a some poor Koopa's head like it was nothing. But here I was, in some dimly lit, one room apartment, filth littering the floor and the ceiling, thinking some poor turtle to death. I have no idea who this poor guy is or what he did to deserve this, but I'm not payed to ask questions, I'm payed to use my talents quickly and leave.

I'm out of the building as fast as I was in it. The sooner I do my work, the sooner I get my coins. I take the usual alley roots through the city until I can find that nifty little pipe I always take after completing a job, and head down it. Smells like shit and piss, but dirty jobs come with dirty smells.

"Done already?" asks my partner, a Gloomba named Cordelia. What I wouldn't give to shove my mushroom up one of her warp-pipes.

"I wouldn't be here if I wasn't" I tell her.

"Still can't believe you can off someone so quickly."

"I hope you're just as fast cleaning up the gore. Pretty messy this time."

"Next time, could you just melt their brain from the inside?"

"It doesn't work like that."

Cordelia goes through the pipe for clean up duty. Her rear-end peach is princess-tier on the way up. I lay low, and wait for her to come back. To pass the time, I levitate over a bottle of Chuckola Cola from the little mini fridge Cordelia set up down here. This underground abode has really grown on me these past few months. It isn't much, just a couch, the fridge, the television with the VHS connected to it, a box of videos, and Cordelia's spare clean up supplies in the corner, but it's like a little home away from home. I can see why her Gloomba kind spend all day living down here, in a weird way.

Cordelia comes back just as I'm about to finish watching a nature documentary on Piranha Plants. I have no idea why she likes this stuff, but I'm willing to give anything a chance.

"You can go now," she says.

"See you later," I tell her.

I make my way up the pipe, get on a bus, and head on back home. This job pays real well, but I don't have enough to buy a car just yet. In time, maybe.

My apartment isn't big, but it's much better than where I was living before. It's the least I deserve, I think, after the shit I went through in the war. Yeah, I'm a veteran, but who isn't these days? It seems there's a new war with the Mushroom Kingdom every year, our whole fucking economy is based on war. Really though, the war helped me. I wouldn't have discovered that I had better psychic powers than any other Goomba, and I wouldn't have gotten the work that I do because of it.

As far as shitty situations go, I've got the least shitty one out there. I look out the window, at that night sky over this broke, crime filled city.

My name is Conrad, and this is KoopConica. My home. My shitty little home.


	2. Blood Trail of The Brain Stem

I wake up from another nightmare. The Red Menace was haunting my dreams again, this time crushing my head in slowly with his foot. Last time he burnt me alive with a fire ball. War is hell.

There's an envelop under my door. I open it up, and coins start spilling everywhere. Like I said, my job pays well. At the top of the coin pile now on the ground is a letter.

"Your next target is Cory the Spy Guy. You'll find him tonight at Klub Koopa. Do not disappoint."

I never got one job right after the other one before. Usually it takes around a week or so before my next hit, but I'm not complaining. If I got a letter, so did Cordelia, which means we'll be meeting up tonight outside of Klub Koopa. I like the place because the music is loud and the drinks are enough to quiet the world for a little bit. It's a nice combination. I've got time to spare though, so I go out to hang with a buddy of mine down by the dock. They call him Carlos, or the Womp. He's just a goon for hire, but he's a damn good guy. I take the bus to the closest stop near the dock, and I head down there.

Carlos is playing dice with a few Koopas, and it doesn't look like he's doing so hot.

"Fuck, I can never win this fucking game!" he yells out. The other Koopas laugh for awhile, before they see me approaching and shut up. No one knows about my talents, besides for Cordelia and my employers, but rumors get around fast, and anyone who's looking to keep themselves safe learns who's dangerous and who isn't.

"Conrad! My main Goomba! How the fuck you doing?" asks Carlos.

"I'm doing fine. I'm just bored and looking for something to do."

"Man, that's great, because have I got the craziest shit for you to see."

Carlos urges me to follow him, and I oblige. We head down to a warehouse right by the docks, and head inside. The place is practically empty, save for a few boxes filled with who knows what.

"Man, I'm paying a guy to let me hide some real good shit here, and I want you to see it."

He heads over to one of the boxes and pops open the lid to it. In it are a few plastic bags with a bit of purple powder inside of them. I've seen this kinda stuff before. Ground up poison mushrooms.

"What, you're dealing now?"

"That's fucking right, Conrad. In a few more of these boxes, I've got myself some locally grown poison mushroom. Taking this stuff gives you such a crazy high you wouldn't believe. It's real good stuff, you want some?"

I decline. I stick with the legal stuff.

"Suit yourself, man, I'm gonna be fucking rich off of this powder. I've even got this guy who's gonna deal it at Klub Koopa. You should totally work with me, man, we vets gotta stick together."

I decline again. I've got enough good work as it is.

"Well shit, what the hell do you want to do then?"

"How about we get something to eat? I'm buying. Maybe some fast food or something."

Carlos accepts, and we find ourselves a McToads to eat at. I hate how Mushroom Kingdom culture finds its way into KoopConica, but I won't lie that they've got some tasty fast food there.

We hang out for a few hours, just talking about whatever. Television, movies coming out, stuff we saw during the war, news talking about the possibility of another war in the future, that sort of thing. Carlos isn't the smartest guy out there, but if he likes you, he'll be willing to take a whole lot of hurt for you. He was a good man to fight besides.

Eventually, I decided to head back home, telling Carlos I was gonna just read a book or something. Bring up anything like a book and Carlos will just turn the other cheek. That was a lie though, I always leave some time in the day to practice my psychic powers. Right now, they're mainly just levitation and, as I said before, destroying people with my thoughts, but I'm trying to see if I can do some other tricks. So I head home, turn off the lights, and try some meditation stuff I made up, but nothing really comes from it, and I just decide to take a nap until I need to get going. Cordelia and I always meet up at the same time for every job, no matter where we gotta go to do it.

So the time comes, and I find Cordelia waiting for me outside of the club. Bouncers know that two people like us always get in, or there's gonna be consequences. Before we get in though, we talk about the plan. I'm gonna find the Spy Guy in there, and use my psychic powers to throw him into something lethal, making it look like he tripped. If I can do it without anyone else seeing him die, Cordelia will figure out a way to get him out of there without causing a scene. If I can't, the crowd thinks he just had an accident, and the night just has to be ruined for the crowd.  
Cordelia and I head in, and we're immediately assaulted by Sarasaland pop music. I got no problem with Sarasaland stuff.

The place is dark and crowded as always, with all sorts of people dancing and making fools of themselves. Spy Guys back in the war were sneaky bastards, but now, seeing some washed up war vet still dressed like a covert operative should make things a little more easy.

"Yo man, you want some PMP?" someone asks me.  
I turn around, and see a Spy Guy holding a little plastic bag with ground up purple stuff right in my face.

"PMP? Poison Mushroom Powder? Who are you?" I ask.

"Name's Cory," he answers, "this stuff is new and fresh, man, new and fresh, this will send you on a real trip."

A trip is something I'm going to send him on. Or at least I was, until he suddenly backs up.

"Ah crap, I know who you are!" he yells, before everything suddenly goes black.


	3. Nightmare of The Amygdala

While I'm out, I have another nightmare. This time it's me being frozen in a block of ice and pushed down into a pit. Brutal stuff.

When I wake up, I'm tied to a chair in a dark room. Ropes like this aren't going to hold me, so I use my mind to break them easily. Some floodlights turn on, and suddenly I see two Hammer Brothers with their weapons dead set on me. I use my telekinesis to grab one of the brothers and throw them into the other, before crushing both their heads in without even moving a muscle. If only I could do that to Mario and Luigi, than maybe I wouldn't be here.

Someone comes out from the darkness and into the light, standing between the two dead brothers. I know that blue hair.

"Ludwig von Koopa?"

"Why yes, my dear friend. It has been a long time since you were under my command."

I served under Ludwig during the war. Ludwig is a madman, and everyone knows it. Sure, all the Koopalings are insane, but Ludwig is especially nasty. During the war, the other troops and I would tell stories about how he would take prisoners of war to his lab and do horrible experiments on them. Some say he's the one who perfected turning living beings into blocks. Real crazy sci-fi magic stuff. Or maybe it's magic. I don't know.

"Why am I here, Ludwig?"

"Who do you think has been paying you for those assassinations, you simple minded buffoon? You think Bowser would ever let something as powerful as a super psychic go under his nose?"

"How did I get here?"

"I carefully orchestrated your capture, my friend. The Spy Guy was secretly working for me, of course. I won't tell you how you were brought here, or where here is, because that would just be silly. It is time for the second stage of your testing, as of course, those assassinations were stage one."

All the lights turn on, revealing the room to be full of Hammer Brothers, at least 10 pairs of them. I never did figure out if Hammer Brothers were actually brothers or if they were just paired up together, but I don't care right now. A barrage of hammers rains down above me, and I need to act quickly. The hammers stop in mid air, and are hurled right back to the throwers. The Hammers Brothers that survive the hammer blows are promptly forced to slam into each other until they're a fine mist by my thought. The ground is now covered in blood, and Ludwig has a big grin on his face. He's a crazy bastard, as I said.

"Very nice work, Conrad. But I have many more tests for you."

I don't care much for having my life put at risk, so I try crushing his head in with my powers. However, he doesn't seem to react. He pulls out his wand and points it to me.

"Oh Conrad, you fool, do you think you are unstoppable? Despite what you think, you are far from the first Goomba to have a stronger psychic power than others. I have ways to keep my mind safe. Now I'm going to need to punish you for attempting to kill me."

Not wanting to be hit with some sort of magical bolt, I think of the next best thing to crushing him with my psychic powers. I use my telekinesis to grab the hammers, and hurl them at him one by one at his back. He turns around creates some sort of shield with his magic, but this gives me the perfect opportunity to do something while he's distracted. I use all of my psychic might to send as many hammers as I can to his front, while sneaking a few of them behind his back. With one solid hammer thrown right to his head, his skull is cracked open. His magic shield goes down, and I make sure to bury him in a pile of hammers and dead bodies, just to be safe.

I run to the exit, and open the door, only to find myself in a place I really don't want to be. The dark red sky and the boiling heat confirm this place to be where I think it is. I am somewhere in Bowser's Castle.

Not a very good day.


End file.
